Moebius: Empire Rising is a contemporary adventure that merges classic point-and-click puzzle solving with Jane Jensen’s sophisticated storytelling. Travel the world using Malachi’s unique deductive powers to analyze suspects, make historical connections, and uncover the truth behind a theory of space and time the government will defend...

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About This Game

This thrilling new adventure game from master storyteller Jane Jensen (Gabriel Knight, Gray Matter) and Phoenix Online Studios (Cognition, The Silver Lining) introduces Malachi Rector, an expert in antiquities whose photographic memory and eye for detail transform people and clues into interactive puzzles.

When a secretive government agency enlists him to determine whether a murdered woman in Venice resembles any particular historical figure, Malachi is left with only questions. Why would the U.S. government hire him -- a dealer of high-end antiques -- to look into a foreign murder? Why does David Walker, a former Special Forces operative he meets in his travels, feel like someone Malachi’s known all his life? And how come every time Malachi lets his guard down, someone tries to kill him?

Moebius: Empire Rising is a contemporary adventure that merges classic point-and-click puzzle solving with Jane Jensen’s sophisticated storytelling. Travel the world using Malachi’s unique deductive powers to analyze suspects, make historical connections, and uncover the truth behind a theory of space and time the government will defend at any cost.

System Requirements

Windows

Mac OS X

Minimum:

OS: XP/Vista/7

Processor: 2.0 GHz

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: ATI or NVidia with 512 MB RAM**

Hard Drive: 4 GB available space

Additional Notes: ** - Not recommended for play on Intel systems with integrated/shared video memory

Recommended:

OS: XP/Vista/7

Processor: 2.0 GHz

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: ATI or NVidia with 1 GB RAM**

Hard Drive: 4 GB available space

Additional Notes: ** - Not recommended for play on Intel systems with integrated/shared video memory

Minimum:

OS: Snow Leopard (10.6.X)

Processor: 2.0 GHz*

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: ATI or NVidia with 512 MB RAM**

Hard Drive: 4 GB available space

Additional Notes: * - For Mac systems, an Intel-based processor is required., ** - Not recommended for play on Intel systems with integrated/shared video memory

Recommended:

OS: Snow Leopard (10.6.X)

Processor: 2.0 GHz*

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: ATI or NVidia with 1 GB RAM**

Hard Drive: 4 GB available space

Additional Notes: * - For Mac systems, an Intel-based processor is required., ** - Not recommended for play on Intel systems with integrated/shared video memory

It's impossible to discuss Moebius without sounding cruel, but they say honesty is its own reward, so here we go.

First of all, the game is hideous. Not just "not very pretty", not "outdated", but positively hideous. The kitschy 2D art is sort of acceptable if you close one eye; the poor 3D models and inexplicably terrible animations, however, are not. Either the artists are aliens who never saw a real human being, or they are simply people stuck doing a job they have absolutely no talent for. The ugliness permeating the game is unbearable.

But okay, looks aren't everything; let's be mature and look past that. How does it play? Well, badly. Everything is stilted, unresponsive and seems to be plodding through a thick layer of mud; even the simplest actions take half an eternity punctuated by random pauses. And speaking of actions, let's discuss puzzles. By and large, they are oversimplified to a point that's almost insulting, and yet still manage to make little to no sense:1. There is an object lying in the corner of a dark alley. Malachi will happily come right next to it, but won't pick it up, because it's too dark, and you need to fix a streetlamp first. It's a brick.2. A cut lanyard is fixed with superglue. Lanyard. Superglue. Seriously.A bizarre addition to the traditional formula is that Malachi won’t pick up objects until he knows where he’d like to use them, with precisely one result: backtracking guaranteed, which really doesn’t play nice with the lumbering pace of it all. And dear lord, the whole thing ends with an honest to goodness maze. In an adventure game. I thought the nineties taught us never to do that again, but apparently I was mistaken. So. Dull.

But alright, alright, who cares about puzzles. Characters and story, that's what adventure games are all about! – Well, that is the worst thing. When I first learned what the overreaching plot was, I burst out laughing. Not because it is particularly funny, but because it is absolutely ludicrous. Sure, Gabriel Knight 3 and Gray Matter got sort of silly towards the end, but Moebius gets to that point about one third in and never stops going until it dissolves in a raging torrent of crazy (and painfully sexist to boot). And as far as characters are concerned, while I sort of want to appreciate the romance angle that’s going on in here, everyone in the game is so very wooden, whether it’s talking about the models, voice acting or writing, that it’s like watching two robots trying to learn what this “emotions” thing was all about. And failing, just like everything else in Moebius is wont to do.

Moebius is not as bad some of the reviews say but it’s not that good either, it’s a bog-standard adventure game that does very little to make itself memorable. It’s a real disappointment considering this is Jane Jensen’s newest game. Jensen’s previous games, the Gabriel Knight series and the more recent Gray Matter, were quality written games with likable characters that got you immersed in the games and their stories and are some of the best adventure games around. Moebius is not this, while the basic plot is interesting enough at first the main characters are really bland and the side characters are all horrible people but not in an interesting way. The puzzles are alright for the most part, but the last section of the game is a terrible slog of padding and occasional trial and error puzzles. The graphics aren’t good, but they were on a budget so I can easily forgive it. I didn’t run into any glitches so it’s solidly designed in that regard.

Ultimately I don’t really regret buying it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are more than enough recent adventure games that are far better that you could play instead. (Broken Age, the Blackwell Series, Kentucky Route Zero, Gone Home, Walking Dead, and Wolf Among Us just to name a few) Not to mention that you’re also better off playing the Gabriel Knights and Gray Matter, the former you can buy on GOG, the latter on both GOG and Steam. You can do a lot worse when it comes to adventure games so I would only suggest getting this game if you’re really hurting for adventure games and it’s on sale for cheap. Overall though Moebius is just really mediocre and easily forgettable; for the average person I’d say skip it.

I consider myself a big fan of Jane Jensen's and classical adventure games in general (as you can probably tell by my choice of the Steam avatar), but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. It rehashes all the adventure game tropes and clichés (not in a good way) and much of the puzzle design is flawed or illogical. Most crucially, though,I found myself getting bored with the plot and couldn't care enough to keep playing. I never got to finish the game as much as I wanted to because it felt like a waste of time. It simply wasn't fun or engaging enough. In a genre of games that specializes in storytelling, I'd say that's a big minus. The characters (especially the main character Malachi Rector) are unlikeable, the dialogues are uninspired, and the animation is stilted. For the longest time, I seriously wondered to myself if the main character was supposed to be a hunchback by design because of his very unnatrual-looking posture. It turned out it was just bad character modeling. You'd think they would invest some time and effort in designing him to at least NOT look like a disabled person. He's only the protagonist of the game. That you have to stare at for the ENTIRE duration of the game.In the meantime, I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of GK 20th Anniversary Edition.

Moebius is an entertaining and decently good point n' click game that lacks a lot of polish. Jane Jensen's story is bit silly but interesting. Robert Holme's music is fantastic but bit repeatitive. The gameplay is little bit disappointing because of the narrow amount of choises you can make. Moebius feels like a simplified and slightly modernized version of those 90s point n' click adventure games that we all grew up with. The length of the game is around 10 to 15 hours for an average player.

I liked the characters in the game and I liked the story. Althought I do have to write that Jane Jensen in past has written better material than this. There're issues with the narrative that feel stupid after you've played the game though. And even during the game you occasionally wonder why certain things had to be done in a particular way.

Moebius is a fairly basic point n' click game that doesn't do anything particularly well or bad. It's like it was made following a googled tutorial on how to make a point n' click adventure game. It doesn't add anything new or even try to challenge the existing concepts.

Most of the puzzles in Moebius are fairly easy to figure out. There's usually only one route to take to a puzzle and only one solution for that puzzle exists. Sometimes the solution is rather unrealistic. To avoid making Moebius a "hidden object" game and to add some realism into it the game doesn't allow you to pick up items or go to some places until the need to do so arises. That leads to an issue where you need to remember place of certain items you previously couldn't pick up. Occasionally there are more challenging puzzles that are well written. The main character also has infinite pockets to stuff things to which I thought was amusing.

Towards the ending of the Moebius started to fell apart. For example (without spoiling anything) the player needs to fly from Washington to New York to pick alcohol from a bar the main character has contantly refused to enter into any given point of time during the game. There's nothing indicating you need to do so. I don't even understand why there couldn't be alcohol store at Washington player could enter. This is done so because main character thought that the antique item in his shop he saw earlier would still be there and that he needed to pick that up for a certain character. This is done based upon observation of that character's tastes. And so upon exiting antique store main character thought that he would also need to bring alcohol seeing the bar on other side of the street. That is some truly horrible game writing and game design in my opinion.

Graphics in Moebius are decent and I like the art style. But this is probably a good point to start talking about the bugs. Moebius has lots of bugs. None of those bugs break the game and they're mostly just visual annoyances. Such as main character is able to stand on certain places he isn't supposed to be able to stand. Or certain water effects are places on surfaces where they shouldn't be. Occasionally the animations have timing problems. Sometimes there are texture related issues such as really low resolution textures. None of the visual issues are dramatically bad. It's just a sign of a lack of polish in Moebius.

Music and audio is good and there are lots of nice music. However sometimes the main theme just repeats itself so much that it's the only thing you'll remember after you've played the game. This is due the fact that the main theme is also present in various tracks in a suttle ways. So even if I do like the main theme quite a bit, it became an annoyance to hear so often during the game. Sometimes there were audio tracks where the mixing had failed. Voice acting in this game is decently played out.

User Interface of the Moebius is weird but it works. There are no "verbs" which makes the game easier to play since the game always offers only the actions you can do with various points of interest. Moebius is designed towards people who have little or no experience with point n' click adventure games. The way UI has been designed and the strong hint system in this game reflects that. I also thought it was weird that the game didn't have end results screen despite counting points in a similar manner to the classic Sierra adventure games all which have the end results screen.

Technically the game works fine most of the time. But being based on top of Unity Engine has all the good things and all the issues that come with the Unity Engine. For example the game has freezing issues on certain hardware. But those can be corrected with a launch parameter. And sometimes the rendering quality is pretty bad.

To sum things up, Moebius is entertaining game which is fun to play. The story is interesting but sometimes badly written. I liked the main characters and would like to see more of their adventures in the future. Moebius as a game also severely lacks polish and fine tuning. It's worth the cost but it's not outstanding game like Gabriel Knight or Gray Matter.